Appendix A: Additional EFA solutions

Appendix overview

In this appendix, I report additional exploratory factor analysis (EFA) results that were excluded from the main text of Chapter III, including: (a) unrotated versions of all of the EFA solutions reported in Chapter III; (b) oblimin-transformed (rather than varimax-rotated) versions of all of the EFA solutions reported in Chapter III; (c) additional varimax-rotated EFA solutions not reported in full in Chapter III because I deemd to be redundant with the reported solutions; and (d) EFA solutions for participants in Studies 1c and 4, broken out by which target character a participant assessed first vs. second.

Unrotated solutions

Throughout this dissertation, beginning in Chapter III, I have reported EFA solutions after applying varimax rotation. This rotation, which maximizes the sum of the variances of the squared factor loadings, is intended to make factors more interpretable by producing “simple structure” (Thurstone, 1949). Here, for completeness, I present unrotated EFA solutions for all of the EFAs reported in Chapter III.

Study 1

Study 2

Study 3

Study 4

Varimax-rotated solutions previously deemed redundant

In Chapter III, I focused my interpretation on a subset of the EFA solutions suggested by the three factor retention protocols, excluding those solutions in which additional factors were redundant with the 3-factor (BODY-HEART-MIND) solution. These additional factors tend to explain very little of the shared variance; tend not to be the dominant factor (the factor with the strongest absolute factor loading) for many, if any, mental capacities; and tend to have very weak factor loadings. I include them here for completeness.

Study 1

The factor retention criteria employed in Weisman et al. (2017) suggested retaining 3 factors for all of the studies included in Study 1; see Chapter III. In contrast, parallel analysis suggested retaining 4 factors (instead of 3) for Studies 1b and 1d; minimizing BIC suggested retaining 4 factors (instead of 3) for Study 1c, and 5 factors (instead of 3) for Studies 1a, 1b, and 1d. See Figure A.5.

Study 2

All of the EFA solutions suggested by the three factor retention protocols are reported in full in Chapter III.

Study 3

The factor retention criteria employed in Weisman et al. (2017) suggested retaining 3 factors for all of the age groups included in Study 3; see Chapter III. In contrast, parallel analysis suggested retaining 2 factors (instead of 3) for younger children; and minimizing BIC suggested retaining 4 factors (instead of 3) for adults, and 1 factor (i.e., a “null” solution) for younger children (ages 4-6y). See Figure A.6.

Study 4

All of the EFA solutions suggested by the three factor retention protocols are reported in full in Chapter III, with the exception of the 1-factor (“null”) solution suggested by minimizing BIC for younger children (4-5y). See Figure A.7.